The WSM regularly discusses, debates and decides on what our collective political approach is. The Points of Unity are the most basic political agreement necessary to be a WSM member or supporter. They are 8 short points which outline the anarchism the WSM stands for.

A few thoughts on the start of the #repealthe8th campaign. Commentators who thought the anti-choice side were better organised because they went full throttle faster should reconsider - how much damage have they done to themselves with fake stories, fake 100s crowds & neo-nazi smears. At this stage they must be wishing they had done & said nothing over the last week & instead focused on fact checking & claims that could stand 30 seconds scrutiny. If you are pro-choice you should reconsider anything presenting the campaigns as if it was a apolitical horse race - focus on the issues and not on performance.

Saturday March 10th saw an anti-choice march pass through Dublin, part of their campaign to try to maintain the status quo where pregnant people and doctors can be jailed for 14 years for taking abortion pills in this country while others are denied control of their own maternity care. Polls show that few people support this position and its ‘let women die’ implications so the anti-choice campaign is trying to create the fiction of mass support in the hope that people will be more inclined to vote No.

Aware of this, WSM decided to put together a team to go out and document the march for ourselves including physically counting everyone who marched and using other techniques that give a good estimate of the numbers marching. Below we will bring you through the results of each of these counts and estimates but the headline item is that when the organisers claimed 100k had marched this was a blatant lie that we will show is even physically impossible. We counted 8930 marchers. All of the other methods we used also limited the maximum size of the march to less than 15,000.

A large anti-choice march will pass through Dublin today and the organisers will attempt to massively exagerate the number taking part as part of their campaign to keep the hated anti-women 8th amendment. WSM will be there providing a count of the real numbers of people marching and we would strongly encourage our supporters to retweet and share the results as well as challenging any false exaggerated reporting of the numbers you may see. Along with the rest of the pro-choice movement we are not mounting a counter-protest this year, we will simply be there to observe and to count. From 14.00 track @wsmireland on twitter and keep an eye on our Facebook pages, in particular Solidarity Times which will carry a livestream from around 2.15.

Graphic - how many people can be crammed in at rock concert density on Merrion square.

International Working Women’s Day is steeped in the radical history of women demanding improvement in our daily lives and in our working conditions. IWWD dates back to 1857 in New York City. Women garment workers went on strike to demand a 10-hour working day, better working conditions and equal rights. In honour of this strike, another was held in 1908 by women needle trade workers. They demanded voting rights and, an end to sweatshops and child labour. Two years later, the socialist, Clara Zetkin, proposed that the 8th of March be commemorated as International Working Women’s Day. It was first celebrated nationally in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution, a revolution which began with a strike of women textile workers.

On February 10th over 20,000 took to the streets of Macerata (Italy) at a national antifascist demonstration, one week after a fascist terrorist attack on migrants in the city. Demonstrators who came from all over the country, joining many people from the local area, held a powerful show of strength in resistance to the swelling of fascist activity and legitimation in Italy. The strong attendance and relatively peaceful atmosphere was a stark contrast to the predictions of both mainstream media mouthpieces and political opponents who envisioned either a low turnout or violence.

Fascism

a Workers Solidarity Movement position paper

What is the Purpose of this Position Paper?

It is important to have a firm understanding of what fascism is beyond vague generalities about racism and authoritarianism so that we may correctly spot it and be effective in preventing its success, especially given that fascist organising requires an emergency response.

There are problems which are related but not very often discussed together. These are 1) climate change and pollution, 2) peak oil, and 3) globalisation - very large and complex problems which though not insurmountable require serious consideration.

What the author writes here is simplifying reality as the main purpose is to provoke thought in the reader and encourage further research.

The Turkish invasion of revolutionary Rojava has now entered its 17th day. NATO’s 2nd largest army has failed to achieve any significant breakthrough against the defenders of Afrin despite deploying some of the most advanced tanks, helicopters, artillery and jet bombers. On our graphic the small map at top centre shows Turkey in orange, the tiny blue area under Turkey is the canton of Afrin, the target of this invasion and one of the 3 original cantons of the Rojava revolution. These cantons are where the experiment in direct democracy, gender equality, and sustainability began in 2012 in the most impossible conditions of the Syrian civil war and the ISIS invasion of two of the cantons.

The announcement that there will be a referendum to Repeal the hated 8th amendment is the product of decades of active campaigning. Pro-choice campaigners built for repeal ever since the referendum was passed in 1983. If at first this seemed like a distant demand now repeal looks by far the most likely outcome in May. The story of how this happened illustrates how change comes in general. That is not through elections but through people getting organised to demand that change, regardless of which politicians happen to be running the show in any particular year.

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This site archives most material the WSM publishes but there is often a delay of a few days before stories get copied here from our Facebook pages. To see material as we publish it follow us on our main page linked below or if you live in Ireland also via Solidarity Times.

Our twitter coverage is different to what appears on our Facebook page and includes highly curated retweets of important international stories.